For Your Calendar: Craft Exhibitions
Homo Faber; sculptural wood furniture; an epic ceramics retrospective; ikebana in Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House
A sweeping net-cast for those who appreciate knowing about upcoming / very exciting happenings in the craft world. This is our season.
This over-the-top month-long craft-centric biennial in Venice—where else?— celebrates and showcases craft from around the world in the most extravagant way possible. Case in point: this year, Homo Faber (which is currently underway) is curated and art directed by filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria, I am Love) along with his design studio manager/protege, Nicolò Rosmarini. It’s like the Olympics of craftsmanship: more than 800 objects by 400 artisans from 70 countries, exhibited with exuberant fanfare. Across the city, old Venetian workshops open their doors for a peek, and artisans ply their trades for an audience. You can buy tickets for live demonstrations, like this one by Italian globe-maker and illustrator Leonardo Frigo, who draws on techniques from a 17th-century book by a Venetian globe artisan, or this one by Sussex-based basketweaver Matilda Grover. Or maybe this one—a contemporary take on the tradition of L’Aquila bobbin lacemaking.
And for those who won’t be there in person (most of us!), Homo Faber doubles as a comprehensive online guide, which you can access all year long to read about a truly remarkable number of ceramicists, decorative painters, embroiderers, gilders, glass sculptors, goldsmiths, bookbinders, typographers, featherworkers (!), and on and on.
FOR YOUR FALL CALENDARS
In the art world, fall means open season for the most highly anticipated exhibitions—and this year, hallelujah, there’s a wave of craft and craft-adjacent work on the radar. It’s such a thrill to see major museums finally recognize what many of us have always known: of course craft can be art! Here, a running list of exhibitions you might want to know about: